This Friday, January 29, Gretchen Rubin, author of the memoir The Happiness Project and the popular blog by the same name, joins host Charlotte Abbott for our weekly #FollowReader chat from 4-5pm ET.

The Happiness Project book was an instant New York Times bestseller earlier this month. The blog has appeared on Slate as well as the Huffington Post and other sites – and more than 33,000 people have signed up for the monthly newsletter.

Gretchen Rubin has published four books and written three unpublished novels— now safely locked in a drawer, she says. She began her career as a lawyer – starting as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor – before becoming a full-time writer.

Among the topics we’ll explore on Friday:

How Gretchen developed her blog while writing her book, and was picked up as a featured blogger by Slate and the Huffington Post, while also using Twitter to drive traffic to her blog

How she differentiated her blog from her book, and convinced even her most loyal weekly readers that her memoir would be fresh and rewarding enough to buy in hardcover

How she lay the groundwork for her national book tour by engaging her blog readers, and other factors that helped her memoir become an instant New York Times bestseller

Here’s a taste of what Gretchen has to say about planning her book tour:

But the response was fabulous! Last time I checked, 700 people had replied to my question! I was dumbfounded – and thrilled by the enthusiasm, as you can imagine.

Of those 700, a lot of replies came from towns that would be hard to add to a tour – Anchorage, Alaska say – and a surprising number of people responded from overseas. It was great to have this new way to get a feel for my readership, and I could see interesting “hot spots.” For example, I was struck by the number of people who responded from Philadelphia, but then I remembered that the Univ. of Pennsylvania offers a program for Masters in Applied Positivity Psychology, so maybe that has something to do with it.

To join the #followreader conversation, here’s what to do:

On Friday, January 25, just before 4pm ET, log in to Twitter or whatever interface you prefer. (We recommend Tweetchat, which refreshes quickly and automatically loads your hashtag when you are in the discussion.)

To follow the discussion, run a search for #followreader

I’ll start by asking Gretchen Rubin (@gretchenrubin) a few questions, before opening up the discussion to the group.

To post a comment to the discussion, make sure that the hashtag #followreader is in each tweet you write.

If you can’t join the discussion, watch this space next week for a recap of the highlights.

The long-simmering question of how to elevate the status of women writers when it comes to major review coverage and awards drew scores of smart comments and many new faces in a rousing discussion on November 13, 2009, with the #followreader and #fembook hashtags on Twitter.

Intially prompted by the sidelining of important books by women from various year-end “best books” lists and awards, the #followreader #fembook conversation explored some reasons why women writers may be judged differently from men; which books by women rightly deserved major attention this year; and whether or not a women-only literary award might help draw greater attention to the best women writers in the U.S.

Tweets came fast and furious, leaving my guest, Bethanne Patrick (@thebookmaven), host of WETA’s The Book Studio and a National Book Critic’s Circle member, and me (@charabbott) — doing our best to keep up. By the end, many participants said they would like to revisit the topic, in a discussion focused on possible solutions to the problem…and not just for women’s history month!

For highlights from the #followreader #fembook conversation, keep scrolling.

No women writers won a National Book Award this year, but there were a number of very strong female finalists, including Bonnie Jo Campbell, who talks here about her novel American Salvage, and Jayne Anne Phillips, who talks here about her novel Lark and Termite. In nonfiction, there was also Adrienne Mayor, who talks here about The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy.

On a much more encouraging note, four of the five novelists on the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35″ were women: Ceridwen Dovey, author of Blood Kin; C.E. Morgan, author of All the Living; Lydia Peele, author of The Reasons For and Advantages of Breathing; and Karen Russell, author of St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

On the Atlantic magazine’s Best Books list, two women were on the list of the year’s top five writers (A.S. Byatt with The Children’s Book and Alison Light with Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury). Nine women were on the Atlantic‘s long list of 25 authors, which amounts to a 36% showing for women. That’s the highest percentage of women on the Best Books lists we’ve seen.

EarlyWord also noted that there was little consensus between the “best books” on the Atlantic, PW and Amazon lists, except when it came to women. Interestingly, four books by women got the nod from two of the three lists – making them slightly more critically acclaimed than the books by men that appeared on only one list. Here are the favored women:

Byatt, A.S., The Childrens Book — Amazon #88 and Atlantic Top Five

Davis, Lydia, Collected Stories — Amazon #56 and Atlantic Runner Up

Mantel, Hilary, Wolf Hall — Amazon #3 and Atlantic Runner Up

Munro, Alice, Too Much Happiness — Amazon #30 and Atlantic Runner Up

Highlights of the #Followreader #Fembook Discussion

Why Do Men Get the Lion’s Share of the Critical Attention?

@thebookmaven: I interviewed Mary Gordon today, and she said “Notice WHO REVIEWS.” #fembook #followreader

@jenwgilmore I had a prof-and this was grad school-tell me women didn’t write big books. except ship of fools,and that was a mess! #followreader #fembook

@thebookmaven See? That prof and others like him are why I think we need to keep talking about this. #fembook #followreader

@CapitolClio No “domestic details” and the home = no 19th century literature. No Austen, Trollope, Thackeray. #fembook #followreader

@bookladysblog Reactions to work by Wally Lamb if he = female? #followreader #fembook

@charabbott When Roth and Updike write domestic novels, they are praised for their versatility! #fembook #followreader

@toofondofbooks Yeah, THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU by Jon. Tropper is totally “family fiction!” #fembook #followreader

@bookladysblog What about THE CORRECTIONS. If that’s not family fiction… #fembook #followreader

Last Monday’s news that Publishers Weekly had excluded women from its Top Ten Best Books of 2009, and included only 29 women in its list of top 100 books of the year, met with incredulity, groans and outrage. On Twitter, the conversation quickly morphed into the #fembook hashtag, where participants suggested ways to challenge what some called a pervasive bias against women when it comes to major reviews and literary awards, particularly in a year that many consider a great year for books by women.

@thebookmaven

For more on where the #fembook conversation led, keep scrolling. Where will the conversation go next? That’s up to you!

Join me, Charlotte Abbott, on Friday, November 13, from 4-5pm ET, for a joint session of #FollowReader and #fembook, where we’ll discuss what can be done to elevate the status of women writers and books by women in a world where most authors, readers, book buyers and publishing staffers are women.

#Fembook: A Hashtag is Born

Early last week on #fembook, book bloggers, critics, authors, publishing professionals and readers shared links to the Guardian (UK) story about how a new group called Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA) had confronted the PW announcement with an open letter of complaint and a wiki of great books published by women in 2009, and invited sympathizers to join its Facebook group (created when the group called itself WILA). Others noted that, lest we unfairly vilify PW, the magazine’slong list did include categories that are overlooked elsewhere, such as graphic format and mass market titles, as well as a number of writers of color.

By the end of the week, #fembook had become a fast-flowing conversation about great books by women published in 2009 – thanks to the announcement by #FridayReads moderator Bethanne Patrick that the two hashtags would join forces for an all-women’s edition of the weekly #FridayReads book recommendation discussion.

For those interested in the #fembook discussion and title recommendations, here’s an archive of the complete conversation between November 5 and November 10.

And here are a few other commentaries, and efforts to elevate the status of women writers, that cropped up this week – please let us know about any we’ve missed!

SheWrites Day of Action calls for women to write a blog post about PW’s exclusion of women from its Top 10 list, buy a book by a woman and take a photo of yourself holding it, and tell five women to do the same – by Friday, November 13, 2009.

Women Unbound Reading Challenge encourages people to read fiction and nonfiction by women. The challenge runs for a year, from November 1, 2009 to November 30, 2010.

In the latest podcast from Books on the Nightstand, Random House sales reps Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness present a lively examination of the books by women writers on their own shelves, and talk passionately about their all-time favorite woman-authored books.

In the Guardian, editor-turned-author Harriet Evans writes, “I’m fed up with seeing some of our best novelists written off as ‘chick lit’.”

To join the #followreader conversation on Friday, here’s what to do:

Just before 4pm ET, log in to Twitter or whatever interface you use (e.g. Tweetchat, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, etc.)

To follow the discussion, run a search for #followreader

I’ll start by asking Bethanne Patrick (@thebookmaven) a few questions, before opening up the discussion to the group.

To post to the discussion, type #followreader in each tweet

NOTE: You might want to experiment with TweetChat, which refreshes quickly and automatically loads your hashtag when you are in the discussion.

Looking forward to tweeting with you on Friday!

Watch this space next week for a recap of the highlights. And please feel free to suggest topics for upcoming #followreader chats below.

About

Follow the Reader is the blog of NetGalley (www.netgalley.com), a place where professional readers — reviewers, media, bloggers, journalists, librarians, booksellers and educators — can read and request digital galleys they want to review.